Food in space
Planning out martian menus means improving space cuisine
Planning out martian menus means improving space cuisine
Before Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley blasted off in May 2020 aboard SpaceX’s Endeavour, they had the traditional astronaut breakfast of steak and eggs. It’s one of NASA’s many food traditions, but for this particular breakfast at least, there was science behind the menu choice.
Steak and eggs washed down with orange juice, and notably tea, was served to the first American in space, Alan Shepard, on 5 May 1961 before his launch in Freedom 7. According to the NASA archive, no coffee was allowed 24 hours before the flight, as it might have kept Shepard awake, and he still wasn’t allowed any at breakfast because of its diuretic properties. The menu was designed by Beatrice Finkelstein of the Aerospace Medical Laboratory and contained little fibre to be ‘low residue’, which in medical parlance means fewer, smaller bowel movements.
Shepard’s flight time was only 15 minutes, so he didn’t need to eat anything while in space. But a few weeks before, Yuri Gagarin was the first person to do just that on his 108-minute flight, sucking beef and liver paste from a tube. Before Gagarin’s flight, scientists weren’t sure if swallowing in zero gravity was even possible. During the decades that followed, astronauts’ time in space grew into days, months and sometimes years, so the need for both sustenance and sanitation became critical.
The Apollo missions provided not only a giant leap for humankind, but also one for gastronomy when NASA invented the spoon-bowl pack for flights to the Moon. These plastic bags contained dehydrated food that was reconstituted by adding hot water via a valve. An article in Nutrition Today magazine from 1969 quoted one NASA scientist saying: “The variety was satisfactory, and there was enough to satisfy their hunger and maintain their performance,” though that’s hardly a ringing endorsement of space food’s taste. “No one goes to space for the food… but the views are amazing,” says Shuttle astronaut Don Thomas. Thomas flew four Shuttle missions in the 1990s, totalling 44 days in orbit. “Space food is a lot like camping food. It’s freeze-dried or irradiated.”
Cooking in space still often means injecting hot water into a pouch, though the Space Shuttle had a small convection oven that blew hot air over the irradiated meals to heat them up. The International Space Station (ISS) now has an induction oven.
Scientists have realised food is more than just fuel for astronauts – it plays an important role in their mental wellbeing and can be a reminder of home. “We were allowed to carry a snack to the launch pad in case of things like weather delays,” says Thomas. “My favourite food is pizza, so I said, ‘can you make me a pizza instead?’ And NASA did. “I think it was the first pizza ever flown in space.”
“No one goes to space for the food… but the views are amazing”
Don Thomas
In 2016, UK astronaut Tim Peake famously took his favourite food to space: a bacon sandwich created by chef Heston Blumenthal. Bread can be particularly tricky in zero gravity, as it can leave crumbs that can interfere with sensitive equipment, so many astronauts today choose flatbreads and tortillas. Astronaut Terry Virts even created his own ‘space cheeseburger’, putting a beef patty, cheese, tomato paste and Russian mustard in a tortilla wrap. With the ISS came more room, better support facilities and longer mission times, and so food became better and more varied. Astronauts now get several fresh food deliveries, as well as growing a few crops like lettuce.
With NASA and others wanting to send humans to Mars, the food question just got a lot more complicated. Vickie L. Kloeris was a food scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), and until her recent retirement led the food science team at NASA during the Shuttle era through to the ISS. She recently highlighted some of the issues of feeding astronauts on route to Mars.
First is how long a mission to Mars will take.
Just travelling there takes around seven months, and another seven to get back. You’d also want to spend significant time on the Red Planet itself. What’s more, you can only realistically go or return roughly every two years, when Earth and Mars’ orbits are closest. Even a back-of-an-envelope calculation reveals that three meals a day for a crew of four for over four years is a huge amount of food; far too much to take in one go. Clearly food supplies will have to be pre-positioned.
This leads on to the second problem: shelf life. Food will have to maintain optimal nutrition and integrity for over five years. “You wouldn’t want to launch the crew until you knew those prepositioned supplies were in place,” said Kloeris.
“We can make food that will control microbial growth, but we can’t control the chemical changes. They will change the quality and nutritional content of the food,” she adds. A further factor is how exposure to radiation in deep space may affect the quality of the food.
One particular area of concern is degradation in foods containing vitamin C. “Many nutrients stay stable, but some do not. One of the ones that’s a challenge is vitamin C,” says Kloeris. A lack of vitamin C causes scurvy, which plagued
You wouldn’t want to launch the crew until supplies were in place”
Vickie L. Kloeris
18th-century explorers. Kloeris and the team at NASA found that powdered beverages enriched with vitamin C helped maintain optimal levels.
Assuming these quality challenges can be addressed, we come to the next problem: quantity. “Another real danger is menu fatigue,” says Kloeris. “What can happen is that people eat enough to survive, rather than thrive.” The US military has seen this happen with service personnel, and whether soldiers or scientists, teams need to be in good shape to complete their missions.
Though a lot of work, a mission to Mars lasting a few years is achievable with today’s current technology and resources. But thinking long term towards a permanent base on Mars – and all the food and waste needs that come with that – is a Herculean undertaking.
Kevin Cannon is an assistant professor at the Colorado School of Mines and part of its space resources program. In late 2019, he and Daniel T. Britt published a paper titled Feeding One
Million People on Mars. It examines what sorts of foods can be produced on Mars at scale and quickly. “I think the main challenge is making an early transition from imported supplies to locally produced food products using Martian materials. This will require a huge amount of enclosed, pressurised space with heating and lighting that needs to be newly constructed, or tunnelled out of the countryside,” says Cannon.
Rearing meat would be fraught with ethical and technical problems, and so insects might be an alternative, which are easy to transport, keep and reproduce rapidly. Another option is ‘cultured
“Another real danger is menu fatigue. What can happen is that people eat enough to survive, rather than thrive”
Vickie L. Kloeris